He May Try, But
by UnexpectedNudity
Summary: [A Man Cannot Control His Dreams Prologue] By request, The dream Harry stumbled upon, from Severus' perspective. Set several weeks prior to Dreams. WARNING: contains sex of the man on man type. Duly warned.


He May Try, But [_A Man Cannot Control His Dreams Prologue_

Severus knew he was dreaming before he'd even begun. He had always been something of a lucid dreamer and, of course, he'd gone without his usual dreamless sleep draught that night. Negligent, Severus, and foolish.

The darks in his familiar dungeon classroom were too dark, and the sparse lights too light. He noted so with minor relief. He could've been in any number of horrific locations other than a slightly overly dramatic version of the potions labs – could've been thrust into any of hundreds of brutal nightmares. He sat down at his desk. Strange, how everything could be so similar and yet so obviously fabricated. Looking down at his hands – stark and pale in the strange lighting – he flexed them slowly, and was struck with a thought.

Before he could act on it, however, and pull back his sleeve to see if the Morsmorde was indeed still there, he heard a soft knock at the door. It sounded almost… timid.

"Enter," he said, before he could consider just who might be behind a door in his dream. It didn't matter, not really. What would happen would happen no matter how much warning he did or did not have.

Severus felt his face drained of all color, as no Dark Lord or ghastly beast had ever done, as Harry-Bloody-Potter stepped sullenly (yet far too nervously to be normal) into the lab. Oh. Oh no. Suddenly it did matter. Severus cursed his negligence and thought longingly of the dreamless sleep potion left simmering in his personal lab. What had possessed him to let his stores get low? And now, one of… these dreams.

He opened his mouth at once to tell Potter to get out, but was compelled to close it again – compelled to follow the storyline his subconscious was dolling out. So, instead of leaping to his feet and cursing Potter to his imaginary death, he steepled his fingers calmly on his desk and leveled a flinty gaze at the boy.

"Good evening Mr. Potter," he said, though what he'd intended to bark was closer to 'Get out immediately!' "I see you managed to remember your detention this time." Potter shifted his weight from foot to foot.

"Yes Sir," he replied. Severus stood, and strode to a row of cabinets.

"You'll begin by alphabetizing this storage cabinet." He opened it, and found that it was filled with a jumble of bottle and jars that were far more disorganized than anything one might find in his real potions stores. "I assume you are familiar with the alphabet?" he continued, inwardly rolling his eyes at his own jab.

But Potter seemed suitably insulted, and nodded curtly at Snape, his jaw clenched. No doubt restraining himself from some sort of temper tantrum. Severus amused himself for a moment with the absurd idea of Potter restraining himself from any sort of impulse, as he stood beside the cabinet for a moment or two.

As Potter set to the task, glancing cautiously over his shoulder every few seconds, Severus returned to his desk. There was a stack of papers there, which hadn't been there when he'd first begun this dream, so he sat to grade them. Severus raised an irritated eyebrow at the first one. Why was it that his students were still so dismally substandard, even in his dreams?

Papers passed by and by under his red-tipped quill as the time passed, and Severus even let himself hope that perhaps this would remain a dull dream after all…

He almost jumped at the sound of glass shattering against the cold stone floor. Almost. Instead, his eyes snapped up from the essay in his hand, and he saw Harry rooted to the spot, shocked, standing over a shattered bottle. Severus shoved back from his desk, the chair scraping violently across the floor. He found himself inexplicably livid at this imaginary offense. 'No. No,' he told himself. 'Don't touch him.' But Harry had snapped out of his frozen state at the sound of him standing, and the whelp was flushed with fear. And Severus couldn't help it.

"S-sorry," Potter stuttered as Snape swept, ever-so-wraithlike, over to the Gryffindor. He flicked his wand, absently murmured a _reparo_, and the jar flew back together, the contents funneling themselves into their rightful place.

"Not to worry, Mr. Potter," Severus drawled. "Nothing another detention can't fix." Potter almost flinched as he said this, and Severus automatically shifted forward a little to loom over him. "My my," he continued. "Don't you enjoy detentions, Potter? I'd have though differently considering how many you land yourself in."

He shouldn't. He should never, under any circumstances, do what he was thinking. But then, this was a dream, Severus knew that, and when had he ever followed the rules, even in reality?

He put one overly pale hand to Potter's chest and pushed gently, just hard enough to press the boy's back against the open shelves behind him. The bottles jostled as Harry's eyes flickered uncertainly.

"Perhaps you need to learn better respect, hmm?" Severus murmured. Could there be a more obvious lack in Potter's character? He could think of none.

Harry's chest rose and fell unevenly under his hand, and he let his fingers move just enough to emphasize the contact. Potter's Adams apple bobbed, and Severus was accosted with the powerful urge to bite it. His expression changed subtly with that thought, apparently to something even more threatening, and the Gryffindor tried to shift backward. But Potter had nowhere to go, and succeeded only in knocking a collection of bottles over with one nervous hand.

"S-sorry," he said again, eyes unsettled, darting everywhere but Severus' face. That would never do. Withdrawing his wand, Severus brushed the tip under Potter's chin, tilting his head up. He most certainly did not fail to notice the way Potter's knuckles went white on the shelves supporting him, nor the tiny noise that escaped his throat before he could summon the voice to speak. Not that he said much when he did find words – this was, after all, Severus' dream. And the whelp could have his tongue cut out for all it suited Severus when he spoke.

"Sir?" Potter asked, voice distinctly irregular. And Snape made no reply, only drew the tip of his wand down the Gryffindor's throat, over his bobbing, tempting Adam's apple and across his fluttering pulse. Potter's breath came up short. And it was simply too perfect. The boy was too nervous, too submissive, too silent, and Severus' body responded the only way it could. It awoke. Closing his fist in the fabric of Potter's robe, he yanked the boy up to meet him in a kiss that was so wrong, so deliciously depraved that it set his blood alight as easily as a spark to petrol.

He disregarded any notion of gentleness. There would be no repercussions for any marks he gave this incarnation of his most loathed student. So, he worried not about how hard he bit, or where, and when Potter released the shelves in favor of his shoulders, he didn't hesitate to grab the boy's wrists and force them back to the cabinet. He did this, yes, but how could he have anticipated the keening, moaning, sob of a sound that wrenched itself from Potter's throat as he did? It startled him, wanton as it was, into breaking the kiss. And even as his shock was drowned by base desire, Severus was glad he had pulled away. The sight of Harry Potter, lips bruising already from his teeth, eyes half closed, pupils dilated, pinned to the cabinet and panting like a man half-drowned was something that he would never, ever be able to erase from his memory. Not that he would seek such erasure.

Potter's hands twitched and clenched where they were trapped, and the boy's hips jerked towards him. Severus' eyebrows twitched up for a fraction of a second before abruptly returning to a more characteristic intensity, and he pulled Harry bodily from the shelves and onto one of the tables. A cauldron clanged to the ground, but he was so far beyond caring that he hardly heard it.

Severus set upon Potter's clothes at once. Despite the overwhelming desire to be biting those swollen lips, within moments he had stripped the boy down to his uniform shirt and slacks, the first of which he didn't bother unbuttoning (favoring instead the more direct approach of tearing it in two). Potter's slacks and underthings were discarded as well, and dropped at their feet like so much rubbish.

Hands grabbed at him and he relented, allowing himself to be pulled into another kiss. Potter was enthusiastic, that was obvious – far more so than he ever could be in the waking world. The boy would probably be paralyzed with fear should such a situation ever arise, not that that would be an insurmountable obstacle, or even a disagreeable one. But, that was entirely inappropriate to consider, especially when _this_ Potter's legs were wrapped around his waist, and _this_ Potter's face was writ with overwhelmed, chaotic arousal.

Dragging his lips up to Potter's ear, he forced his mind to work properly for a moment, just enough to recall a few choice incantations that were always useful in such circumstances. He may not have had occasion to use them in a while, but, Severus supposed, they were not spells easily forgotten. Particularly not the first.

He husked one string of Latin directly into the Gryffindor's ear, and the effect was immediate. Potter's voice lost any and all remaining coherence, reduced to a tortured whine as his fingernails tried (and failed) to find purchase in the well-worn and lacquered wood of the table. His back arched impossibly, legs clenching around Severus, who grunted in approval.

The second spell, assuring adequate lubrication, he hissed against the boy's chest before catching one dusky nipple in his teeth. Hands found his hair and grasped at it desperately, accompanied by an exceptionally erotic sound, and Severus took his touch from the flushed, young body beneath him just long enough to pull the clasps free on his robes. As they fell to the ground, he managed to undo his belt buckle as well.

He hooked Potter's knee over his shoulder for better access, knowing he neither would, nor could wait much longer, yet pausing just long enough to hear Potter's moaned:

"Professor – " before burying himself root deep. The boy was exquisitely tight around him, and Severus could feel already how long he would last. Or, more to the point, how briefly. No time to waste, then. The awareness that he was dreaming flickered back to life in his mind just then, and he was suddenly very keen on seeing this through before morning interrupted.

The fuck was fast and rough, Potter letting loose a constant stream of totally incomprehensible obscenity throughout. Somehow, Severus found this almost amusing. If anything could be found amusing whilst one is fucking the living daylights out of a boy less than half one's age, that is.

He looked up at Potter's face and felt at once as any smugness he might have found in the boy's incoherence died. There was nothing amusing in that face. That debauched, Dionysian, crushingly erotic face. The so-called savior, laid out beneath him. He felt his peak approach at once, accompanied by a dim sense of absolute loathing. Somehow, perversely, they complimented each other.

Severus latched his mouth onto Potter's chest, just as he took the boy's arousal in hand, and was satisfied to feel Potter's body seize up with climax almost at once. As every muscle in the supple body seemed to tense around him as one, Severus bit again into whatever part of Potter was most available and –

Awoke.

Just in time to reach orgasm fully conscious.

He jerked upright as its hold subsided, releasing his death grip on the sheets. Eyes open to the darkness and chest heaving, he was not pleased at all to see the residual spots of light dancing in his vision. He panted in the silence, stricken.

No. It couldn't have happened again. He'd – he'd taken measures. And yet, clearly they had failed. His soiled nightclothes were evidence enough to prove that tenfold. Severus rubbed furiously at his eyes and got irritably, gingerly to his feet.

"_Lumos,_" he muttered, voice rough and deepened with sleep, among other things, and found his way to the washroom by the dimmed light of his wand. Though there were no windows in the dungeons, and particularly not in his private chambers, he guessed it was somewhere between three and five in the morning. Bloody, wonderful.

He stripped his clothes off in silence and semidarkness and directed a _scourgify_ at himself, clearing away the mess that his _one night_ without a dose of dreamless sleep had left him. He leaned heavily on the sink, dropping his head between his shoulders.

"Lecher," he accused his reflection when he raised his head, examining the long, ashen lines of his face. "Pederast."

By break of morning, his guilt had vanished.


End file.
